Art can help tell the stories of Ohio’s Indigenous history. The Great Circle Alliance is a local nonprofit seeking out this form of storytelling.
The name of the organization comes from the Great Circle Earthworks in Licking County, built by the ancient Hopewell peoples thousands of years ago, said co-founder Marcus Boroughs.
“We are a museum without walls. We don't have an infrastructure or collections. But we're operating out in the community in much the same way as some museums do,” Boroughs said.
The organization was officially founded in 2021. Co-founder Belinda Gore said they wanted to help bring awareness to Ohio’s Native American cultural history – hence the name.
“Neither of us are Native. So we wanted to be sure that we were engaging Native American people, artists, scholars, community leaders, and that we're bridging a place between the arts and heritage history. So ‘alliance’ was a word that, to us, spoke about working in collaboration and partnership,” Gore said.
The alliance has a number of programs, including exhibitions, presentations and self-guided tours.
A traveling exhibit, the next location the exhibit will be installed at is Belmont County Heritage Museum, available to view starting Aug. 21.
Most recently, artist residencies have become the organization’s primary focus. Carey Newman is a First Nations (Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw and Coast Salish) interdisciplinary artist and the first artist-in-residence with the Great Circle Alliance.
Newman said Ohio has a very visible Indigenous presence in the land itself.
“Those sites are artifacts. They're just not artifacts in the way that you think of, like an object that you dig up from under the ground. But they're certainly culturally significant,” Newman said.
Newman is not descended from any of Ohio’s removed tribes. But he did help develop the newest residency program, called “Recovering Ohio’s Indigenous Voices.”
This is an artist residency program open to descendants of Ohio’s removed tribes. Three artists named to the program were announced late last month. They will come to Ohio in October to visit the earthworks, celebrate Indigenous People’s day and present their current artwork.
Later, they will create art pieces inspired by their time in Ohio. The residency is funded in part by the America 250 initiative.
One of the three artists named in the residency is Eastern Shawnee photographer Holli Margell.
Margell said she first learned about the opportunity from her tribe’s newsletter. For her application, she submitted work from a recent portrait project exploring her Indigenous heritage. She says the universe presented her this opportunity to expand on her work even further.
“When this artist call came up, I thought, wow, this is an incredible opportunity, number one, to visit the mounds. I've read about them and I've wanted to visit them,” Margell said. “And also to share a personal project, perhaps with a wider audience, something that's very visible, that can open the door to conversation around why I made some of these images.”
Art produced through the residency will be assembled for an exhibition at Denison University next year. Newman’s work will be on display at Denison University’s museum in January.
